Unvaccinated Belgian woman contracted two COVID variants simultaneously

A patient who died from COVID-19 in March had contracted two variants of coronavirus at the same time, as reported in the National Post, noting it is believed to be the first documented case of its kind.

The case, discussed at this year's European Congress on Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), involved a 90-year-old Belgian woman who became sick with the Alpha and Beta variants.

The woman, who was treated at a hospital in Aalst near Brussels, had not been vaccinated, Belgium's Dutch-language public broadcaster VRT said. 

"Both variants were circulating (in March) in Belgium," molecular biologist Anne Vankeerberghen of the OLV hospital in Aalst said on VRT's website.

"It is therefore probable that this woman was infected by two different people with two variants of the virus. Unfortunately, we do not know how this infection happened," she said.

The European Commission has warned that it expected the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus to become dominant in Europe this summer, citing estimates from the EU disease prevention agency.